HPE to face lawsuit for allegedly misleading DXC investors HPE looks set to face a lawsuit claiming it misled investors about employee layoffs relating to the spin-off of its enterprise services business, after a judge declined to dismiss the case. The legal action relates to IT giant HPE shedding the HPE Enterprise Services division in 2017 to merge it with rival technology …
I was an Enterprise Services employee during the time of the merger, after which I was a DXC employee until I retired. I heard that, as one manager put it, "we'll save $1 billion by eliminating duplicate positions. You don't need to worry about those layoffs, because you probably don't know them anyway."
That seemed, at best, wildly optimistic at the time after some back of the envelope calculations. In order to save $1 billion, you need to eliminate about 10,000 positions (assuming on average $100,000 per position). Where would you find 10,000 duplicate positions?
HR? Finance? Accounting? You can save a few positions but it takes a certain number of people to handle the workload, and the total workload wasn't going to change. It takes a certain number of people to manage those people, and that doesn't change. You lose a few at the top, but nowhere near enough to make those numbers.
Facilities? Where possible you could merge facilities and reduce staff somewhat. Of course, merging facilities means moving people and equipment, so is a cost short term.
Sales? Sales and pre-sales teams that were competing for the same markets could certainly be merged and trimmed.
Account teams? The point was made that for the most part CSC and HPE-ES had non-overlapping customer lists, so the potential here was small.
IT? IT would be busy for years merging systems.
So were there really 10,000 duplicate positions, particularly after the staff reductions that took place in the years leading up to the merger?
I don't understand how anyone can pretend to be surprised by such behaviour, which is standard practice, let alone sue they were misled.
The investors are admitting they are idiots and gullible and identifying themselves as rubes to ripped off again.
HPE + CSC ->DXC was the very worst of US corporate behaviour made flesh, all the worst actions of HPE + CSC (both of which were sketchy) amplified x100.
The lies the companies told employees were scandalous, and many of the poor practices continue to this day.
How DXC expect to recruit the many staff they need in the UK is a mystery to me, unless of course DXC is recruiting from the investors
Well ... this couldn't happen to a nicer company or group of execs who have systematically creamed all value out of what could have been a big player in IT services. I was lucky enough to be paid to leave just before HPE ES merged with CSC to form DXC. The HPE ES account team (for Deutsche Bank) were a bunch of cowboys who treated the staff like something on their shoe, it was clear (and I saw the plan) to ditch us all for offshore at the earliest opportunity. Deutsche Bank senior management knew that but they didn't care because we had all been transferred to HPE ES.
I hope the case goes in the investors favour - its time some execs face the reality of their lies and deceit.
TBH looking at the Speaker debacle/shit-show in the House of Representatives… it’s surprising anything gets done.
Next up will be the faux debt ceiling US Govt shutdown squabbling, after Janet Yellen called it the other day that will break coming Thursday….
…Don’t fuck with people’s money!!!
I was very highly paid contractor to HPE assigned to the HPE Datacenter Transformation program and was assigned to several VERY high visibility projects. I was unceremoniously shitcanned 2 days before thanksgiving 2015 with no notice and no severence. I was told all of my projects ran well past expected delivery, long by more than 9 months.
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